1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally directed to the field of casino management and in particular to a device and process whereby casino chips can be automatically sorted and loaded into trays to provide a supply of casino chip trays to gaming stations within a select area of the casino. In one embodiment, the invention contemplates a sorting, stacking and loading device that loads a chip tray to exact specifications corresponding to various programmable or selectable chip denomination configurations.
2. General Background and State of the Art
Modern casinos have evolved to incorporate hundreds or thousands of slot machines or other types of coin or ticket operated gaming machines. However, gaming tables where players can play blackjack, poker games, roulette or craps remain as a mainstay of the casino design. Generally, the slot machines are placed around one or more gaming table pit areas. A single pit area may include such gaming tables such as blackjack or poker tables, roulette tables and crap tables. The pit areas are generally positioned in a central portion of an open area within the casino. Each pit area is overseen by a pit manager, responsible for a significant number of oversight functions including security, detecting improper play, and table money and chip management.
Each gaming table includes a chip tray for continually organizing and storing the bank of chips used for play on that table during its operation. The dealer, croupier, or operator collects the chips from lost player bets and places them in the tray and in turn pays chips for winning bets from this tray to the winning player. Depending on the number of players and the magnitude of their game wagers, the value of the chip bank stacked in the table chip tray at any given time will significantly change on a continuous basis during a shift or operational period of the table game. In large modern casinos ICT or Intelligent Chip Tracking systems provide the ability to monitor this chip bank value or level on a continuous basis on each table by various electronic means. However, a precise accounting of the physical chips contained in the tray at given intervals such as at shift start and end may be required to independently verify such chip tray inventory starting and ending values. And in smaller less automated casinos it becomes vital to meet regulatory auditing requirements of table game revenues by performing periodic physical counts of the chip tray bank inventory. Such independent physical verifications can be time consuming and labor intensive.
Additionally most US casinos do not return the table chip trays to a standard chip tray bank value and/or chip denomination configuration upon opening or starting such a table's period of operation due to the time and labor required for reloading the chip tray to such a standard. The chip denomination configuration is comprised of such components as the number of different chip denominations in the tray, the values of the chip denominations in the tray, the number of chips of each different denomination in the tray, and the channel locations and quantities of each chip denomination in the tray. Such standards would of course vary by type of table game, and minimum bet denomination set for play in a specific table game.
Casinos also include an accounting cage and/or a back room area, which is discreetly and securely located away from the center of activity within a casino. In many casino environments when open a gaming table, it is necessary for the casino to arrange to have casino chips delivered from a caged vault area across the casino floor to the gaming table located in a particular pit area or grouping of gaming tables. Restocking of a gaming table chip tray during the course of play may be necessary if patrons have several wins and additional chips are necessary. Restocking a gaming table during the course of play can be distracting to the players and cause the casinos to lose revenue if an impatient player must wait for additional casino chips to be delivered to the gaming table.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to have the ability to restock a gaming table with casino chips from a position located proximate to the pit area. However, since the casino chips can be utilized as money within the casino, and have values from one dollar to several thousand dollars, precise accounting for the casino chips within the accounting system is mandatory at all times. Whether these table chip trays are counted and reloaded in the pit area or in a more secure gage or back room area, it would be desirable to automate the physical counting, sorting and reloading process to provide accuracy, controllability, flexibility, simplicity and speed.
Although devices currently exist with the capacity to count and sort gaming table chips into columns of similar colors or denomination values. These existing devices do not automatically load a gaming table chip tray with a specified bank value and/or chip denomination configuration as previously described.